Nordic Research Network on Trust in and between Organizations

Description

Countries struggle to find ways to be perceived as trustworthy by people around the world, because trust is linked to efficiency, business opportunities and political influence. This paper is based on case studies of five Public Diplomacy activities: Iranian President Rouhani’s letter in The Washington Post (2013); Denmark’s trust-building effort in Pakistan following the so called “Muhammad crisis” (from 2010); The British Council’s strategy for trust building in China (2012); Russian President Vladimit Putin’s letter in The New York Times (2013), and the USA’s trust building effort in Turkey (from 2006). The best results have been obtained where Public Diplomacy has been linked to successful traditional diplomacy at state-level (Iran) or has created a framework for people-to-people relations (Denmark, UK and USA). A backlash was experienced in the case where a foreign state leader patronized the national leader (Russia). I all cases, respect for people in other countries despite differences in culture seem fundamental for a Public Diplomacy initiative to succeed. A central concept in the paper is International Trust as described by Brewer, Gross, Aday and Willnat (2004).

Period	6 Mar 2014
Event type	Seminar
Location	Skodsborg, Denmark